


Nightmare Fuel

by Rat_chan



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 05:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15812451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rat_chan/pseuds/Rat_chan
Summary: Jack was worried enough after Mac decided to disappear for a while after quitting. But when Murdoc starts texting Jack increasingly disturbing threats to Mac, the man is beset by nightmares. Only in these, he's not the one who dies horribly.





	Nightmare Fuel

**Author's Note:**

> Set right after the season 2 finale.

The first text came four days after Mac had quit. Which was just three days since he had disappeared, taking a backpack full of gear and clothing, leaving his phone and a short, unsweet note.

" _I need some time. Don't worry and please don't look for me. I'll be back soon._ "

But what could Jack do _but_ worry? Murdoc had put Mac's home in the "Psycho Killer's Guide to the Hollywood Hills." Quitting the Phoenix Foundation would not remove the innumerable targets from his back.

_He's not safe_. And it was no longer Jack's job to protect him. _I have to find him_. But Mac did not want to be found yet.

Those thoughts cycled endlessly, spiraling down into the sick, frightened knot in Dalton's gut until they were interrupted by the buzz of an incoming message.

_Fuck off_ , he thought. But then again, maybe it was from Mac. He picked up his phone and...

"Ah, _hell_ no!" He jumped to his feet and immediately fell back into his chair as the sudden movement combined with the dread spinning in his skull cost him his balance. Even so, he kept his grip on his phone and he could still vividly see the photo that had been texted to him from a blocked number.

It was Mac, unconscious and handcuffed to a chair.

"Shit." _Not again_. He closed his eyes to fight off vertigo and fear. The image blazed behind his eyelids: his boy helpless in a dark, mildewed dungeon of a room with... _Wait_.

His phone buzzed again as his eyes snapped open. This time it was a photo of what appeared to be a greeting card.

" _Remembering the good times until we meet again._ " the card read. And it was signed " _Most Sincerely, Murdoc_."

"Son of a bitch!" he swore. His knuckles were white around his phone as he texted the Phoenix team. " _We need to meet at Mac's. Now._ "

\-- -- -- -- --

"Can you trace it?" Jack asked Riley the moment she had his phone in her hands. Precious minutes -- well over an hour -- and several demanded explanations had passed since his first text and they were all now in Mac's living room.

"I can try," the hacker responded, little hope of success in her voice, "but you know how good Murdoc is at these little games."

"Just--" He cut himself off. Of course Riley would do her best. Instead of running his mouth, he started pacing, each turning presenting views of his teammates. Riley working furiously at the phone. Bozer clutching one of Leanna's hands while her free one gripped his shoulder reassuringly. Matty frowning.

"Relax Dalton," the director snapped at him. In a gentler tone she continued, "Murdoc hasn't got him."

Jack whirled back to her. "I know that. But you and I both know that's a threat."

"And we'll make it an empty one."

"I hope so, Matty," Bozer responded. "Just thinking of that creepy-ass killer taking and keeping photos like that." Leanna tightened her grip on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear as he shuddered.

_Thanks, Boze_. Jack clenched his fist as the other man reminded him of one of the many things he had been trying not to think about. "We gotta catch that son of a bitch." It came out a low murmur. Louder, he asked, "Riley?"

"I'm sorry, Jack. He..." She frowned briefly and apparently decided to spare him the technical details. "He's just too good at covering his tracks." Her own worry showed in the slight crease between her brows.

"Well if we can't find him, then we'll just have to find Mac." _Before that bastard does_. "Bo--"

"No, Jack." Matty did not shout, but her words were firm and final.

He turned back to her and glared. "I know he quit, Matty, but--"

"Didn't it occur to you that finding Mac is _exactly_ what Murdoc wants you to do?" There was a hint of hurt in her voice from Jack's implied accusation.

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Damn, but he hated feeling this useless.

"Hold down the fort here." Matty looked at Bozer and Leanna, who both nodded. "Keep looking for Murdoc." She briefly locked eyes with Riley before turning back to Jack. "And prepare a proper welcome for him." Her gaze moved to the fist that was still clenched at his side.

"Yes, ma'am." He tried to sound rough and ready, but impending doom still outweighed conviction in his gut.

_Watching and waiting_. That had only been his strong suit when it was Mac's back he was literally watching...

\-- -- -- -- --

The texts had kept coming daily. They were always paired images and they invariably offered some new, twisted threat to Mac. Jack could not block them and the team had been unable to get any leads from them.

All that they had gotten from those messages was nightly bad dreams. Or at least, he got nightmares and he had seen the same dark circles under his friends' eyes. He could only assume, since no one wanted to talk about it.

_Why can't I dream about a steamroller crushing me, or something?_ His usual nightmares would jolt him awake at the moment of his imminent death. He would shake them off and only remember them vaguely in related moments.

But these were harder to shake. Because it was _Mac_ dying, tortured and alone. And the images returned every time he closed his eyes.

On the night after Murdoc had texted a photo of a nunchaku and a scan of a comic book with a speech bubble saying "It's clobbering time!", Jack had had horrible visions of Mac being chained in a room, with that psychopath stalking around him, taking random swings.

When the images were of a pillow and a CD single cover titled "Breathless", his sleeping hours had been filled with repeated smothering.

Then had come the photo of a paring knife followed by one of a caution sign reading "slippery when wet". His nightmares had been red with blood from a thousand cuts and punctures and he had awakened from Mac's phantom screams to his own shouting.

"You keep your damned hands off him, you psychotic son of a bitch," he had repeated more softly when his breathing had slowed enough.

The day Murdoc had texted a photo of a nail gun followed by a meme of Monty Python bearing the caption "Crucifixion's not so bad!" had been the last day Jack had showed the images to his teammates. Riley had looked absolutely horrified. Bozer had had to excuse himself to be sick in the bathroom. Leanna had taken the first moment to go to a training room, where she had worked herself near to exhaustion. Matty had not said anything. Later, however, Jack had seen her cleaning an already immaculate gun in her office.

It had been enough. There was no need for them all to go through this. Though his sleep had been haunted by images of Mac pinned to a wall and begging for Jack to help him, he had decided to bear it alone.

"He must have gotten bored." he had said to his colleagues when they had asked about any new messages. "Sicko has a short attention span."

They had looked at him with doubt, but most of them had decided to believe him because they wanted it to be true. Matty had given him that "I know you're lying, Dalton" look, but had let it ride at the time.

"Jack," she had spoken to him later, softly and privately. "Maybe it's time for a new phone number."

"And how is Mac supposed to call me if he needs me?" He had cut off the response she had tried to offer at that with, "And what if he starts texting Riley or Bozer instead?"

"You can't do this alone." He had crossed his arms and stared down at her. "Well then at least stop looking at the pictures!"

"What if one of them actually contains a clue, Matty?" Her skeptical expression had clearly communicated how little she thought that possible. "What if the next one..." He had needed a moment to clench his fists against his elbows and swallow the lump in his throat. "What if the next photo is Mac? In real time?"

She had gripped his elbows then and given him one of her rare compassionate looks. "Then at least show them to me."

"You really wanna keep seeing these, Matty?" He had pulled out of her hold and taken out his phone. "You saw him as a kid, playing with his old man." He had loaded the latest texts and held the screen up to her gaze. "Do you really want to look at _this_ shit every day and imagine it happening to Mac?"

She had actually looked stricken as her eyes had taken in the images: a bolt cutter and a page from a nursery rhyme book featuring "Five Little Piggies". "No more than you do, Jack, but--"

"You know who should see these, maybe?" He had known he was lashing out -- taking his fear and frustration out on the nearest person -- but he had not been able to stop at that point. "Maybe Oversight should have a look at these. Maybe old Mac Daddy oughtta take the role of helicopter parent for a change!"

She had offered no initial response. She had simply taken his phone, switched it back into locked mode, and placed it gently back in his hand. "You don't mean that."

"Maybe I..." He had taken a deep, shuddering breath and a tight grip on his phone. "I..."

"You need some rest." He had simply shaken his head. "You are compromised right now."

"I can't _not_ work right now, Matty. The last thing I need right now is more time to _think_."

"Well I'm not sending you out in the field until we _think_ of a better way to deal with this." He had been unable to argue with that. "And, so you know, Oversight has been made aware of the threat against his son and is making his own efforts to protect him." Jack had managed a slight, brief nod at that. "Now go home."

"I'll see you tomorrow, though."

"Bright eyed and bushy tailed or you'll be my errand boy, Dalton."

The conversation -- two days ago, now -- had helped a little. So had the texts his friends had started sending: their own paired images of happier thoughts. Riley had sent pictures of pizza and a skee-ball machine. Bozer's were a screencap of Bruce Willis in Die Hard and a photo of Jack toasting with a bottle of beer. Leanna, who did not know him as well, had gone for the obvious choice of the Cowboys' logo and a Super Bowl ring. Those had kept his waking hours tolerable.

But they had not stopped the nightmares that night. Nor the next, yesterday, when the images had been a box cutter and the Three Monkeys doing that "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" pose. And they were unlikely to succeed any better tonight.

"Pizza and skee-ball," Jack repeated his new mantra anyway as he settled in his chair. "Beers with Bruce Willis." He took a sip of the beer he had in his left hand as he pulled out his phone. "Cowboys win the Super Bowl." He opened up the messages that had been waiting for him for a couple of hours now.

"What the...?" For a moment he stared at the first image in confusion. How was Murdoc going to torture or kill Mac with a box of Trojan condoms? Then he looked at the second image.

" _Use as directed_ ," read the snippet of instructions in the other photo.

The beer dropped to the floor. "No, no, no, no, _Hell_ no!" His voice rose in volume with each word. On the last negation, he threw his phone away from him and got to his feet. His clenched fists went to his temples as he started pacing between his kitchen and the puddle of beer in his living room.

_I can't..._ He kept his eyes wide open as he tried to thump the incipient images out of his head. "You sick son of a bitch!" He stopped at his counter and punched the side of it -- tried to focus on the pain and anger. "You can't make me imagine _that_."

"Jack?" A second punch, that would have no doubt harmed the kitchen, Jack's hand, or both, was interrupted by Riley's voice and knock on the door. "That pizza and skee-ball text was supposed to be an invitation, dumbass."

"Ri?" He called out hoarsely as he unclenched his fists and leaned against the counter. "I..." He needed a moment to compose himself. "Just a--"

"I'm coming in." She must have heard something in his voice. Instead of waiting for him to open the door, she used the key he had given her. "Now you..." She took one look at him and dumped the pizza box she was carrying and her backpack on the counter. "Jack?" she queried softly as she approached him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"I can't, Riley." He shook his head as the countertop blurred slightly in his vision. "I just can't anymore."

"Can't what?" She placed a soft, cool hand under his chin and gently tilted his unresisting face toward hers.

All the weak barriers he had attempted to place around his feelings crumbled before her worried, caring gaze. "I can't _sleep_! I can't eat. I can't even _think_! Not..." He gestured vaguely in the direction he had thrown his phone. "Not after that."

Her gaze moved from him to the miraculously undamaged phone on the floor. He could not find the will to stop her as she let go of him and moved to pick it up. She unlocked it and looked at the images on the screen. "He..." Her face contorted as if she were fighting nausea. "He wouldn't really..."

"You haven't seen it." Unwilled memories surfaced of Murdoc's alternate leering smiles and intense stares. Jack's knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the counter. "You haven't seen the way that psycho looks at Mac." He turned and slumped to the floor, back against the counter. He thumped his head on it to again fight off his imagination. "We have to find him." More than his "happy thoughts", it was this idea that kept the images at bay. _I have to find him._

She crouched down next to him. "We're using every moment and resource we can spare to track down Mur--"

"Not that twisted, psychopathic piece of shit." He turned, reached out, and this time it was his hand on her shoulder. "We have to find Mac." There was a hoarse, high note of desperation in his voice, but he did not care. "I have to know he's _safe_."

"I know, Jack." She reached up and covered his hand with her own. "That's why I tracked him down."

"You what!?" He almost knocked her down with his sudden rise to his feet. "Where?" He caught his balance with one hand on the counter and pulled her up with the other.

"It was not easy. He changed the plates on his car again and you have no idea how ridiculously common that type of vehicle is along the 395. Or how few cameras and satellites cover that ar--"

"Woah, woah." While the minutiae helped steady his heart rate, the continued urgency of his pulse would not allow him to wait. "I didn't ask _how_ , I asked _where_."

She sighed and muttered something beginning with "Nobody appreciates..." as she moved to get her rig out of her backpack. Her gaze, however, was still filled with concern for Jack when she came back to him with the computer. "I found him in the Sierras," she finally answered as she started logging in.

"That's a pretty large area, Ri. You wanna be more specific?" The normality of the interaction eased some of his tension and further calmed his heart rate.

"Yeah, but you're gonna eat some of that pizza," she shoved the box toward him, "and listen to at least a few boring details."

He still had no appetite, but Riley silently stared him down over her laptop screen until he relented and took out a slice. "Well?" he asked around a mouthful of coagulating cheese.

"Believe it or not, there were a couple of databases I was able to find him in: the USFS and the CDFW."

"Wait a minute." His exhausted brain needed a moment to process the letters. "The Forest Service and Fish and Game?"

"Fish and Wildlife," she corrected as she frowned at the pizza in his hand. Once he took another bite, she continued, "He got a fire permit, a wilderness permit, and a fishing license."

"Damned Boy Scout." He almost spit the pizza back out. "What's he doing leaving that kind of trail to follow?"

"Relax, Jack." She reached out a hand to stop him as he started pushing away from the counter. "I don't think Murdoc or the Ghost understand how the great outdoors work."

"Neither does Mac, apparently." He leaned on the counter again and returned his half-eaten slice of pizza to the box -- his stomach just could not take it right now. His nerves could no longer take the waiting, either. "Where is he?"

"Well, I figured he'd have to make a supply run eventually, so I set up a facial recognition search on every--"

" _Please_." He pressed his hands together in front of his face, drawing a deep breath. "Just..." He lowered them, holding them flat above the counter, not trying to stop their slight trembling. "Where?"

Riley gave him a sad half smile as she turned her rig so the screen faced them both. "Well, if he listened to half of what I said to him over that General Store phone..." She clicked open something that looked like an audio program. "He should be at a pay phone right now, waiting for our call."

He gripped her shoulder again. "Is that safe?"

"I've set up a very secure connection." She said nothing more as a ringing sound came out of the laptop speaker.

"Hello," an unmistakable voice answered after a couple of rings.

Still, Jack could not stop from asking, "Mac? Mac, is that you?"

"Yeah, Jack. It's me." He distantly heard the words as he half-collapsed against the counter, eyes misting again with relief.

"Mac," he repeated between sounds somewhere between gasping and laughter. _Safe_. "It's... it's so good to hear your voice, man."

"I..." Mac's voice trailed off and a sigh sounded through the connection.

"Make it good, MacGyver." Riley sounded angry. Jack spared a glance at her frowning face before turning back to the sound wave display on the screen.

"Look, Jack. I'm sorry." There was another sigh-like breath. "I should have known--"

"Mac," the hacker's voice warned again.

"Alright. I _did_ know how worried you'd be but..." An explosive breath sounded over the connection. "But I pushed that away. I just wanted time to think about the Phoenix and my dad... Away from all the people asking me to change my mind." There was a pause, filled with a metallic friction -- Mac must have been fidgeting with the phone cord. "I didn't realize how selfish I was being until Riley called and told me what a dumbass I--"

"I believe 'shithead' and 'inconsiderate son of a bitch' were the words I used."

Jack could not help but laugh at that, though even to himself it sounded a bit hysterical. Calmer, rueful laughter sounded over the line.

"I'm sorry, Jack," Mac repeated, voice immediately serious again. "What I did to you -- to all of you... It's inexcusable. And I promise I'll be home soon."

"Just..." Exhaustion and delirious relief made it difficult to form coherent speech. "Just watch your back, man. Murdoc..." Jack swallowed the hitch in his throat, but still found it impossible to continue. _He threatened to rape, torture, and kill you._ Maybe later, when he had the energy to be angry, he would be able to voice it. But then again, he doubted he would ever be able to tell Mac all of it.

"Riley mentioned he was... playing new games."

"That's way too cute a turn of phrase..."

Something in his tone must have communicated even more, because Mac apologized again, softly. "I'm so sorry." Louder, he continued, "But seriously, you don't have to worry about me here. Unless you think Murdoc is outsourcing to bears or mountain lions."

"Don't you forget the plague." Jack's half-forced levity became more genuine as he heard his friend's laughter. "Don't you go near any dead squirrels, Hoss."

"Wasn't planning on it."

"Oh, yeah, speaking of planning, next time you plan to vanish into the woods, remember a few things. One, you can get wilderness permits at trailheads. Two, General Stores often have fire permits. And three, they also sell two-day fishing licenses and they don't take down your life story to get them."

"I'll keep that in mind," Mac responded, sounding chagrined. "But maybe next time, I'll go with a friend."

"Well this friend is coming to escort you home. Nu-uh," Jack cut off the incipient protest. "Two days more and we're meeting you at whatever bump in the road Riley found you in. You got that?"

"I... I'm looking forward to it." The tone was warm, like a smile. "Really."

For the first time in a week, Jack found himself genuinely smiling in return. "See you in two days, buddy."

"See you then."

"Don't go anywhere just yet, Mac," Riley chimed in. "We've still got round two."

There was a small groan from the other end before she cut the connection.

"Round two?" Jack asked, looking at her now much more relaxed expression.

"Sorry, Jack. I can't stay to share cold pizza." She was packing up her rig as she spoke. "Mac owes me one more call."

"Bozer?"

"Got it in one."

"Ri?" He stopped her as she headed for the door. He held open his arms and she walked into his hug. "Thank you."

She staggered a little as, in his exhaustion, he leaned on her more than he had meant to. Still, she managed a reply. "Any time, man." He allowed her to pull back. "Now, eat that pizza," she pointed to the box, "delete that shit," to his phone, "grab a beer..." Her gaze fell on the puddle on his floor. "OK, some point in there, clean that up. And then finish it all with OG Die Hard on loop until all you dream about tonight is you and John McClane dropping Murdoc's punk ass off a skyscraper. Got it?"

He felt his face pull into another grin as he answered, "Got it."

"See you tomorrow," she said as she left.

He was silent for a moment. Then let out a sigh and looked around the room. His eyes landed on his phone. With a quieter deep breath, he picked it up and opened those hellish texts again. His stomach still turned when he saw them, but...

"Yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker," he said as he tapped away at the trash icon.

**Author's Note:**

> So, my inspiration slash plot bunny only went as far as the angsty hurt part of the story (not unusual) and then I felt obliged to write the comfort (why is that always the hard part?).
> 
> Now to plug any plot holes... Yes, I know the Sierras still have snow on them in early May (which, being the airdate of the season finale, is the supposed setting). Saying Mac took gear was the best I could manage without disrupting the flow of the story. As for what was Matty doing while Riley searched? Pretending she didn't notice so she wouldn't have to report to Oversight. Again, not referenced due to flow.
> 
> Also cut from the story, Mac suggesting Murdoc could never find him in the woods because he can't even open a can of beans.
> 
> Last thing: anyone else notice that Mac's car had a different plate in season 1 and season 2?


End file.
